Nippers and Heroes

Two open water swims taking place 145 km apart on Victoria’s coast on one of the hottest days in January 2023, heralded an unexpected communion of intergenerational Meagher family swimming. My late grandfather Jack – an ardent sporting enthusiast and proud patriarch – would have been tickled pink by this family conjunction. 

In Lorne, my paternal aunt, Jack’s daughter, was swimming in the Hero 80+ age group in the famous Pier to Pub held by the Lorne Surf Lifesaving Club. Across the Bass Strait in the east, Jack’s great-granddaughter, my niece, competed in the under 10 Nippers surf lifesaving competition at Cape Paterson. A difference of seventy years in age between these two intrepid swimmers prompted me to take a deep dive into the family’s history of swimming and more broadly into the history of swimming in Victoria.

My niece started swimming lessons as a three-year-old and now, aged nine, is almost at the end of the swimming program where the milestone is to swim 1000 metres freestyle. My grandfather, Jack enrolled his four children, my father, Terry, twin aunties Moon and Cindy and my uncle Des, aged nine, seven and six respectively in The Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ program held at the Hawthorn City Baths in the summer of 1950-51. All the Meagher kid were awarded a certificate confirming they could swim twenty-five yards (22.9 metres).

The Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ certificate issued to Cindy Meagher 1951

In 1954, Jack and his family moved from Hawthorn to Balwyn and they transferred their swimming membership to the Surrey Park Swimming Club located at a place known as ‘the Dive’ in Box Hill. The Meagher kids swam competitively, with Moon and Cindy reaching state and national championships and Des becoming a champion water polo player. As an adult, Moon returned to competitive swimming in the Lorne Pier to Pub swim in the late 1990s, aged 56.

Victorian Amateur Swimming Association Transfer issued to Terry Meagher 1954

The Surrey Dive, Box Hill

The Dive harked back to the earliest era of colonial swimming venues where natural waterways were adapted into recreational and competitive swimming venues through the construction of bluestone walled ocean pools, modification to river or creek courses, or in Box Hill’s case, reusing the watery recesses of an old brickwork’s clay quarry.  With its towering craggy rock cliffs and fearful reputation of being bottomless, the old quarry was converted into Australia’s first Olympic standard pool with a ten lane course set up by 1933.[1]

Surrey Park swimming venue, The Dive

The two swim clubs Jack and his family were members of, had established reasonably early, the Surrey Park Swimmer’s Club (as it was first known) opened in 1904 and the Hawthorn Swimming Club in 1905. The Victorian Education Department was instrumental in the development of swimming clubs. Conscious of the high numbers of drowning fatalities, the Department encouraged schools to develop swimming clubs in 1898, twenty-six years after education became compulsory in Victoria.[2]  Researchers have found that the establishment of swimming and surf lifesaving clubs and children’s swimming programs have been critical in reducing fatalities from drowning across all ages in Australia, finding at least 18,070 drowning deaths have occurred in Victoria from 1861 to 2000.[3]

Drowning deaths between 1861 and 2000 in Victoria

Pioneering swimming teacher May Cox

A little known mover and shaker in Victorian swimming history, May Cox, (1883–1953) a teacher and swimming coach, joined the Education Department in 1910 and pioneered swimming programs for both children and teachers, significantly influencing swimming education in Victoria. Initially a teacher at Albert Park State School, Cox was the swimming coach of Lily Beaurepaire in 1904-5, who later competed in the 1920 Olympics in the 100-metre and 400-metre freestyle and diving. Cox accepted the Education Department’s newly created position as ‘Organiser of Swimming and Lifesaving’ in which she set to work immediately travelling around Victoria visiting schools, swimming and lifesaving clubs to promote and conduct swimming programs.[4]

Lily Beaurepaire’s brother, Frank, also an Olympic champion swimmer (1908) and former Albert Park State school student, became a trainee teacher under Cox in 1911 learning how to teach swimming. After his traineeship, Frank Beaurepaire joined Cox to become a co-organiser of the Education Department’s swimming program and remained as joint swimming supervisor from 1911 to 1915,[5] however, the role with the Department resulted in a classification as a ‘professional’ preventing him from competing in amateur swimming competitions during this period.[6]

Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ Campaign

At the time Beaurepaire was putting himself forward as a candidate for the Melbourne City Council – he was also a successful rubber tyre manufacturing business owner – he spearheaded the famous Herald ‘Learn to swim’ campaign in 1928 aiming to teach every single Victorian how to swim.

A State-wide drive to teach every person in Victoria how to swim was determined on by 12 powerful organisations who met at the invitation of the The Herald last night.  … The drive, the biggest ever attempted, will be controlled by a central executive representing the Education Department, Police Department, Royal Lifesaving Society, Victorian Amateur Swimming Association, Victorian Ladies Amateur Swimming Association, Municipal Association Combined Progress Associations, Y.M.C.A, Y.W.C.A, Returned Soldiers League, Melbourne Interhouse Sports Association and Boy Scouts’ Association.[7] 

Cox was one of the Education Department representatives and The Herald reported in 1933 that every successful pupil would receive a coloured certificate and instructors would be presented with diplomas. Additionally, for the guidance of instructors and organisers of local ‘learn to swim’ programs, a new booklet was being prepared by Cox and Beaurepaire.[8]

The spectacle of swimming carnivals was an important promotional aspect of the annual Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ campaign, featuring comical diving and swimming competitions. They also served philanthropic purposes raising funds for the Children’s Hospital.[9] In 1953, eleven year old, Cindy Meagher received a thank you letter from the Carnival Manager for participating in a junior Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ carnival to showcase the benefits of the swimming program.

Thank you letter to Cindy Meagher from The Herald,1953

When Moon and Cindy were aged 16, they competed in the seventh annual Carnival as part of the Melbourne Moomba Festival. Moon was invited to compete in the 220 yards freestyle event alongside Australian swimming champion, Dawn Fraser, and Cindy was invited to compete in the 110 yards Invitation breaststroke. To look at the full swimming program click here. As was Jack’s custom, he annotated the program with swimming times and placings.

Excerpt from the Seventh Annual Carnival Melbourne Moomba Festival,1959

Excerpt from the Seventh Annual Carnival Melbourne Moomba Festival,1959

Surf life saving, Lorne and Cape Paterson

Despite this formative era in Victorian recreational and educational swimming history, international swimming champions, and a national identity built on the back of Australia’s love of the water, many surf lifesaving clubs were not established until after the Second World War. Although the Lorne Surf Lifesaving Club was established in 1923*, it folded just prior to the Second War World and was officially re-established in 1947. Across the Bass Strait, but not until 1960, Cape Paterson formed its life saving club and with sponsorship money purchased a planked boat from the Lorne Surf Lifesaving Club in 1961**. Building a volunteer community is intrinsic to surf lifesaving clubs and starting young is not only key to imparting crucial lifesaving skills but also sets a solid foundation for future participation as a lifesaver.

My niece is not aware that she is part of a surf lifesaving education program that started at Cape Paterson in 1969 or a swimming program that can be linked back to swimming pioneers and advocates like May Cox and Frank Beaurepaire, but when I asked her what it was like to compete in the open water swim of the Iron Nippers competition, a triathlon type race comprising 100m run, 100-150m swim and then a swim with a surf board, she said “it was quiet, everyone was focused on swimming and doing their best”. As she told me about the “bronzies”, kids aged 13 to 14 doing their Bronze medallion, my mind flickered to the snippet I read about Cox and Beaurepaire, who tested each other in 1911 and were the first swimmers to qualify for the Bronze Medallion for Swimming and Lifesaving in Victoria.’[10] I asked her about the water conditions, she replied the main worry is big surf, but on the day of competition, that hot day in January, “there wasn’t much chop, it wasn’t too bad, it was pretty good.”

The conditions were also pretty good across the Bass Strait in Louttit Bay for my aunty Moon, and having just turned 80 last year and classed a hero in the Lorne Pier to Pub (rightly so), she lived up to the moniker and took out first place with a time of 23:12.0, swimming the same strokes she learnt as a child in the Herald ‘Learn to Swim’ program.

Postscripts

*There’s a great story about Lily Beaurepaire in Alleyn Best’s history, ‘50 Years and More: A History of Surf Life Saving Victoria’:

Lillian worked in the family business and did many of the tasks at both Carinya and the Cumberland [Hotel] often working in the kitchen. In those days there was a bell placed on a stand on the beach which would be rung if any person got into difficulty in the surf. ‘Aunty Lil’ as she was affectionately known, would race down out of the Cumberland, strip off she wore her bathers under her clothes), swim out to the stricken person, very quickly assisting them back to shore and on occasions performing revival techniques.

**A postscript to the Lorne-Cape Paterson connection, the boat was wrecked in 1964 and the bow is reportedly now mounted on the wall in the Cape Paterson clubhouse.[11]

Footnotes

[1] Andrew Lemon, Box Hill, Box Hill City Council and Lothian Publishing, 1978, p. 167.

[2] Deborah Towns, May Cox: Leading Swimming and Lifesaving Advocate and Patriotic Fundraiser, 1910–1938.

[3] Carolyn Staines & Joan Ozanne-Smith, ‘Drowning deaths in Victoria, Australia’ Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 95(3):174-181, March 2017.

[4] Op.cit., Towns., p.199.

[5] May Cox Biography, Women Australia

[6] Sir Francis Joseph (Frank) Beaurepaire (1891–1956) Biography

[7] The Herald, ‘State-Wide Learn-To-Swim Drive Launched’, 6 October 1928, p.10.

[8] The Herald, ‘Learn to Swim Campaign begins Dec. 6’, 16 November 1933, p. 14

[9] The Herald, ‘Junior Stars to swim at the Herald carnival’ 31 January 1953, p.9.

[10] Op.cit., Towns., p.201.

[11] Cape Paterson Club History.